The Year That Never Was For Everyone Barring Time Lords,
by I am Best
Summary: ... Time Ladies, Matrix Data Slices, and a Selection of Very Unlucky Humans. Who and what Missy was doing during the Year That Never Was. (Spoilers: it was mostly herself.) Featuring: Missy, our heroine, Dr Chang, her puppy, Seb, the foil, and the Master on drums. Rating has gone up.
1. The To-Do List

The main 3W facility was quiet but for the whistle of air conditioning, the clicking of keys, and the crunch of an apple. Two employees and a skeleton were the only souls present. Not counting the millenia worth of stored ones outside the office, but only one person knew about that.

"Did you vote, ma'am?"

"Was that today?" Missy asked around a mouthful of apple. It seemed her manners were just slip-sliding away in her old age. And good riddance. She'd spent so long being proper and polite to an obsessive degree that, nowadays, she reveled in being gauche (to an obsessive degree).

Dr Chang nodded, though he didn't take his eyes from his screen. Missy sat perched at the edge of his desk like some purple-frilled scavenger bird, just waiting for the tedium of form-filling or her own boredom to claim his life. He was a relatively new hire, though, so the novelty hadn't worn off for either of them yet. "Harold Saxon's going to be PM."

"You aren't the one deciding that, poppet."

They lapsed back into silence except for the occasional correction by Missy of Dr Chang's work. The click-clack of the keys had a cadence that about drove Missy up the wall, that wilted her down from her usual poppy, pleasant self. That subconscious four-beat rhythm bounced around the quiet of her mind and had been since she'd begun running parallel to her earlier timeline. She had known it was likely to happen, what with two of her in one time period on one planet and her constant exposure to the Archangel network, but it didn't mean she had to like it. It was quieter inside the Institute, cut off from the world as it was, but the drums still snuck in on Dr Chang's mind.

"They say he's a shoo-in for it."

"I don't trust him."

Chang looked offended, but at least that meant he'd stopped typing to scowl behind his overly large glasses at her. Missy massaged the bridge of her nose and dropped the half-eaten apple in the waste bin. She then pulled out her phone and opened her to-do list. After an embarrassing amount of items, she reached the end and typed in: new keyboards.

"What's not to like?"

"Don't you think he's a little too pat? The man's practically promising - " she cut herself off with a sudden chuckle, "- practically promising utopia." Utopia, heaven, the promised land, Missy did like to reuse plots.

"Is that so bad?"

"Is it good?" Missy asked, pushing lightly on the mental conditioning. She'd done a good job with it back when she was Saxon. Chang's little primitive mind was balking at the merest ghost of an idea that Mr Saxon couldn't be good, but not enough to be obvious. She stood and walked behind him, letting her hand trail momentarily across his shoulder, offering a little more pressure to the conditioning. "With how you lot fawn over him, you'd think he was Rassilon himself."

"Who?"

Missy patted Chang on the arm. "Never you mind, deary. He thinks he is too. That's a man who wants to rule the world. Or destroy it."

Chang frowned like he didn't want to let it go, but a little suggestion under the Archangel's control and he did. It was best not to push too much, fun as it might be, lest she get noticed by the wrong person. At least she had just as much access to the network as her past self did, and Missy put it to good use. She stayed hidden, out of sight, while that gangling tangle of pinstripes went dashing all about London. Her meeting with her own Doctor, all eyebrows and crags and red-lined jackets, was coming, she could feel it in the air. Years away but closer every day. She might not be prim and proper anymore, but Missy still had that obsessive streak that had her stalking timelines so that she met him at the right time, in the right order.

Missy just had to weather one or two apocalypses, courtesy of herself. She headed toward the door, heels clicking smartly on the tile floor.

"As you said, though, he's a shoo-in. Soon, Mr Saxon will be our new prime minister." Missy stopped and turned back to face the room, a hand on her hip, the other thoughtfully placed on her chin. One-tenth of the population could clog up her data slice something awful, and it, being Gallifreyan, wouldn't forget once this was all over and done with, leaving just masses of duplicate files. People. Duplicate people. She still had to pretend to care about them, because Dr Change did and he really was far too empathetic sometimes. "Oh, dear. Mr Saxon's gonna be our new prime minister. I'd better make some backups."

"Backups of what? Everything's automated." Chang had returned to his typing, barely offering Missy a glance until she made kissing noises at him and snapped a photo when he looked up. He'd probably not last through the year that never will be, poor sweet poppet that he was. She clicked out of the camera and back to her home screen, switching to her Heaven app to begin the backup. She'd figure out something more permanent later, and returned to her to-do list to add, just below new keyboards in both importance and numerically, prep Heaven for paradox.

"Never you mind that either."

Maybe, once her own plans were safe and the paradox machine was up and running, she'd pay Mr Saxon a visit. That had been a strange run, even by her standards. It'd be interesting to see how it looked from the outside.


	2. The Day Dr Chang Almost Grew a Spine

Two living and one dead person watched the monitor as Harold Saxon met with the President of the United States, his poor pretty wife on his arm. He had big news about very, very foreign policy, and was kindly handing it over to Pres Winters to handle as everyone watched and waited. Missy and Dr Chang had ordered takeaway and pushed around the detritus on the desk to make room for it. They'd decided to make a day of the announcement, because the dead didn't really need much minding yet, and Missy felt a last meal was in order. Shame it had to be takeaway, but it had been a spontaneous decision. Both of their jackets were tossed over chairs.

Missy had liked Lucy for the most part, a pallid slip of a shadow who knew how to stay in the background and let her Master work. Wooing the locals wasn't exactly new, and she'd picked as best she could back then - money, status, (looks, yes, a politician couldn't have an ugly wife). Ambitious in almost the right ways, but never thought big enough, or dangerous enough. Until she decided to, and completely ruined Missy's plans. That botched regeneration was coming up too. Missy wrinkled her nose. She hadn't had a whole lot of time to think through her plans back then, left gaping holes in the details, too many variables or assumptions. And it had turned out as well as could be expected.

"Is it that bad, having Mr Saxon as the prime minister?" Dr Chang asked. "Or don't you like the idea of aliens?"

"You have no idea," Missy said to both, patting his hand. While at first he'd been a little awkward and fumbling, all nerves and no outlet, he'd grown used to her pets and flicks and didn't hardly flinch at the contact. "But it'll be fun, too."

She pulled out her phone as President Winters began to speak, and shut off any outside access to her data slice. Everyone who died now would simply be dead. Missy was too busy looking at her phone to catch when the president was vaporized, but Dr Chang's gasp caused her eyes to flick up. She had been good looking last time, softer around the edges and small (but the Master, male or female or other, was always small, at least physically) with pretty eyes like whisky.

"Did you see that?" Dr Chang asked, food half-way to his open mouth.

"No, sorry deary. I was looking at my phone."

"The president -"

"Peoples of Earth. Please attend carefully."

"He killed him -"

"Shush," Missy said, holding out her hand for emphasis. "He said please attend, so you should attend."

Dr Chang obeyed her, but his gaze flickered between the video feed and Missy's face, a look of disbelief etched on his features. Missy looked far too smug, she knew, but the paradox machine had been active for nearly two minutes now, so she wasn't worried about him remembering any of this. For a haphazard plan, it had worked surprisingly well at first.

Once Mr Saxon got done taunting the Doctor, he hopped right back into his big speech. "So, Earthings. Basically, end of the world. Here come the drums!"

Missy clapped. She could sense the rip in time itself, the Toclafane pouring out, and couldn't be prouder though she knew how this story ended. It hurt, twisting time until it broke, but good on her past self and her Toclafane, who sounded so childishly delighted the both of them. She'd developed a bit of a parental streak at some point, between Toclafane and Cybermen, her wee babes born from the death of the universe and, well, just death. Humans were so much better crammed into tiny, metal boxes.

"Why are you clapping?" Dr Chang asked, having gone from disbelief to horrified and rightly so. The screen had cut out at some point, presenting an error and a black, empty void.

"Wasn't that an excellent speech? Very to the point. Very honest. Maybe I should have voted for him - that's the kind of politician I like."

Dr Chang stood up, all nervous energy again. He nearly fell over when Missy reached out to catch his sleeve. "Relax, doctor. There's not much you can do but ride it out."

"Ride out the end of the world?" His voice caught, and he pushed his glasses up.

"Yes. Here." Missy held out something, and Dr Chang reluctantly took it, staring at the small fortune cookie she'd placed in his hand. "You look like you could use some good news."

With shaky fingers Dr Chang broke the cookie into pieces, leaving behind the small printed sheet of paper in his hand. He sat down and read it over silently until Missy made kissing noises again to get him to look up. She was training him well, and Missy had no idea how she'd idle away the year if he died. Probably she'd have to take up a hobby.

"Well, what's it say?"

"Fear is just excitement in need of an attitude adjustment."

"That sounds promising. Mine says, 'You learn from your mistakes, you will learn a lot today.' Why I never - Dr Chang?"

There weren't any windows in the Institute, nor could sound pass easily through the dimensionally transcendent space, but they still had Internet. Dr Chang had abandoned his cookie, scattering crumbs across the floor, to look up the most recent news. None of it was good, Missy knew without looking. It'd take some time yet for the Internet to completely fail, and until then it only carried bad news. He was working himself into a frenzy.

She reached over and turned off the monitor, then took Dr Chang's hands in her own.

"You stay right here, Dr Chang, and you'll be fine," she said firmly, looking him straight in the eye and pushing that suggestion front and center. It took for a moment, she could see it, but then his attention turned to the empty screen and... there it went.

"They - those things - they're killing everyone."

"Now you're just exaggerating. It's only about six hundred seventy million people. Hardly __everyone__."

"What is wrong with you?" Dr Chang asked, pulling himself free of her and standing again. "Why are you so calm? How are you so okay with this?"

Missy also stood. He was just too damn empathetic. No amount of mind control was going to calm him down without some effort, not so soon after her previous self's betrayal. "I suppose I just don't care," she admitted.

Dr Chang ran for the door, as though Missy was more dangerous than the flying balls of blades and lasers currently hunting down humanity. He was right, of course. Missy darted after and slid across the slick floor, catching herself in the door frame before she overshot and fell over, effectively blocking Dr Chang. He looked about to shove her aside, but backed down. Mind control wasn't the only sort of mental conditioning there was, after all.

"You're safe in here, poppet. There's no need to go outside. You can live off crisps and bottled water."

"Crisps and bottled water," he echoed, sliding down to the floor. Missy sat primly next to him, legs tucked under her skirts. "That's how we're going to do this."

Missy nodded, then smacked Dr Chang's knee. "Oh, even better! Stay." She pushed herself back to her feet. She left the office, and returned shortly with a bottle and two plastic cups. "I was saving this for a different occasion with a different man, but I can always get more."

"Not anymore you can't," Dr Chang mumbled, staring off into some middle distance.

"Don't be so pessimistic. Here." She popped the bottle and poured champagne into the cups. Settling back down, she put the bottle on the floor and handed a glass to Dr Chang.

Missy raised her own in a toast that Dr Chang unenthusiastically returned. "To the end of the world."

"Cheers."

They downed their drinks, and Missy poured more.


	3. The Who-To-Do List

Missy left Dr Chang asleep on the office floor after disentangling herself from his hug - for not liking contact when sober, he became a sad, soppy bramble in her skirts with a few drinks in him. When he'd wrapped his arms around her waist and cried somewhere between shoulder and chest she'd about disintegrated him right there. But then he started talking about how kind she was, how he respected her and thought her pretty in a scary sort of way, and Missy didn't have it in her hearts to kill him. He'd talked about a bunch of other things, too, but they weren't her so she didn't pay attention. The world was going to hell and she'd have very few people to compliment her then. Where would that leave her? With just her mirror, her toys, and memories of the Doctor calling her beautiful, begging her so sweetly to stay with him, be his companion (but not his equal, she knew, and that's where the memories turned sour).

After leaving her employee unconscious on the office floor, Missy went to visit her other one: Seb. With a great sigh as her only warning she dropped into the chair across the desk from him. He yelped and scattered his papers everywhere. Then, having expressed his surprise as humans did, Seb settled back down with a smile and the paperwork lay where it fell.

"Missy! What did you do?" The smile, like everything else about him, was artificial, but it looked more strained than usual.

"The world's ending."

"Aaand?" His hands rolled, trying to coax out more of an answer. She had a bit of a flush to her cheeks and cottoniness to her head, and got distracted by his movements, which he must have picked up from somewhere. He had been active for hundreds of hundreds of years that she mostly skipped, and this was what he did now, get his gesticulation all over everything. "Aaand?" Seb prompted again. "Isn't that a good thing? More souls means more soldiers. You can start early!"

Missy crossed her legs and readjusted her skirts. "I don't want to start early, I want to start exactly when I mean to start. Besides, it's not going to stick - time travel - I know, right?" She returned the face he made at the mention of time travel. Like all technology, it managed to be both overly complicated and convenient. "So I don't want any of these wibbly dead people who are now floating about the airwaves to be uploaded. It'd just be too much trouble to deal with. Got it?"

"Is that why you made a backup, too? Is there another me running around in your ship?"

"Would it bother you if I said yes?"

Seb didn't reply immediately, actually taking a moment to process the idea. "Yes."

Missy leaned forward and tutted at him, catching Seb's wild hands much as she had with Chang's. "Seb. Sebbie. Sebastian. Sebina. You are just the A.I. interface, because people don't like amorphous nothingnesses being their gods. If I want to duplicate you, I will." He looked crestfallen in a way eerily reminiscent of Dr Chang, probably because that was who he took the look from in the first place. The two doctors of 3W, Chang and Skarosa, had been his only personal contact with living humans, and he'd picked up bad habits from them it seemed. She needed to keep that in mind when dealing with Seb.

Missy sat back. "But don't you worry. I didn't. I needed just the humans safe, so off they went for copying. As soon as this is done, and assuming no damage that requires a reset, I'll delete the backups."

"... You couldn't have come up with a better reason than 'I don't care about you'? 'I'll just reset you if I need to'?"

"Don't be like that, Seb. I care about you very much. You, this data slice you, are intrinsic to my plans for the Doctor -"

"Doctor, Doctor, Doctor. Which doctor, exactly? Skarosa? You were very friendly with him, whispering all these clever little schemes. David Chang? I saw you two sloshing about out there. I might be locked down, but I can still access 3W, you know. Pinstripes, scarves, leather jackets, decorative vegetables? Don't they leave you, always?"

Missy's fists pressed hard enough to her hips to leave bruises. At some point during his tirade she had stood, and loomed over the A.I. A bit wobbly, but still a threat. As soon as he left a gap in his words, she jabbed his shoulder with one finger. "You are getting far too sassy, mister. I will take you apart line by glitchy line if you don't straighten out your attitude."

Seb wilted. "Sorry, __mum__."

"I'm not your mum."

"You sound like my mum," he groused.

Missy, back to her earlier calm, walked behind Seb to slip her arms around his shoulders and lace her fingers in front of him. Her chin rested on the top of his head and she closed her eyes, willing her headache to go away. She shouldn't have let her body process that alcohol. "You don't have a mummy, Seb. I made you - I didn't birth you, I didn't adopt you, I didn't even particularly want __you__. But I made you for one reason, and I like my tools to function properly."

Seb didn't say anything.

"When I come back, I'm going to work on your code. I suggest you do the same. Before I return."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good boy." And, much like the mother she professed not to be, Missy kissed the top of Seb's head. "Tootles!"

Then she was gone.

* * *

Missy popped into her TARDIS to freshen up before heading to the Valiant, try on ten different outfits, wash her face and reapply her makeup. She wanted to look good for the Master, and needed a moment to regain her composure. That was the problem with intelligence - it tended to change, especially when left to its own devices. Another problem for another day and another spot on her to-do list.

She posed in front of the full-length mirror, imagining herself one body back, a hundred-hundred years ago. The Master liked... well, he liked power. He liked games. He liked control, and losing it, gaining it, a tug-of-war across the stars. Harold Saxon in particular enjoyed music to drown out those incessant heartbeat drums. Meat. Humiliating people. Torture. Missy couldn't recall what he preferred sexually. Except the Doctor, always. She grimaced. Missy wasn't about to debase herself. She didn't have any pinstripes, anyway. Just lots and lots of velvet.

Missy must not have had a sexual preference back then, brief life that it was. Sex had been just another item on the to-do list of world domination. It was so long ago when she was him, and she didn't remember meeting Missy so couldn't even crib answers from herself. Odd, but not surprising. Time travel was curious that way, even without the Time Lords governing them so meekly, so narrowly. (Just thinking about them, tucked away in their pocket dimension when they should be burning, __burning__ , set her teeth on edge, and Missy had to breathe deeply to return to the issue at hand). Time straightened itself out some way, some how, and unless it truly became a problem or she had some free time, she wouldn't question it.

Currently, Missy liked all sorts of people, had had time to enjoy herself and explore. She'd even come up with a fun little nickname to call herself, and kept it around as her alias. "Missy" in this mouth, with this tongue and teeth and the accent she'd snatched, sounded just adorable, and she really liked cute this time. Puppy eyes, no eyes, Escher-angle bodies, large hands, her own small ones... Her definition of cute was flexible.

Back when she was Harold Saxon, she liked touching things, not just to establish control, as that was the point of the Archangel, but just to feel them. Noise, songs. Very sensitive to taste, smell, breathing deep the breezes of pollution from her labor camps. Sunrises, fluorescent lights. She reveled in sensations, anything to drown out the drums that weren't just a sound, or a thought, but everything everywhere as far back as she could remember. The memories of the drums had changed, too, curiously, but neither here nor there for Missy's current venture.

Missy hunted down the most flattering of stimulating outfits she could find, petting her clothes enough to make her kitling jealous in search of just the right ply and lay. He proceeded to shed black fur all over her white blouses and underskirts until she'd mollified him with some catnip, locked him in a back room, and found a lint roller. Thusly prepared, ornamented, perfumed, and cat-fur free, Missy stepped out to meet the Master.

Back outside the TARDIS, which looked like any ordinary door at the moment, marked with a sign reading "Institute Director" and under it "Missy", she strapped on the vortex manipulator. She locked Chang in the office then teleported to the belly of the Valiant. No Toclafane here, just the red-blood glow of the Doctor's TARDIS burning itself out, screaming - singing, they called it - as it was forced to sustain the paradox. She placed a hand on the too-warm blue wood of its doors and leaned in close.

"That's what you get for eating me, Sexy," Missy whispered, then placed a red-lipped kiss on the window pane. Let the Doctor find that biometric imprint.

She left the sweltering room for cooler places, pausing only a moment to adjust the frequency on her manipulator. With the Toclafane bundled up in tech, it was easy-peasy to trick their sensors with some simple cloaking. Everyone else was too busy being brainwashed or tormented to pay much mind to the woman in purple (velvet, because she really did have a __lot__ of velvet) swanning through once-familiar corridors. She'd gone for spikier heels that clicked like the knifes they were named after and gave her an extra three inches. Missy felt she could kill someone in these shoes, and not just herself when walking over open grating.

If Missy remembered correctly, she had grown tired fairly quickly after taking over the world, all high energy then sharp crash. Between the TARDIS screaming, time itself screaming, the Toclafane giggling, the world rebelling against the network (and also screaming), the Doctor begging and those everlasting drums, she had needed a bit of a lay-down. Too much stimulation was just as bad as too little, in that regeneration. Never happy, was her Master.

She headed for the living quarters.

* * *

There he was. All tuckered out, poor sweetling. Even her entrance hadn't caused him to stir, which was a shame because she'd put a lot of thought into it. First impressions were everything.

The Master held his body tightly to himself on top of the bedding with only a pillow over his head, muscles wound up tight and knotted. He'd barely taken off his jacket and shoes, left everything else to be mussed up. Missy slipped off her shoes and closed the door carefully behind her, locking out the Toclafane and guards, leaving the Master to her gentle mercies.

She tiptoed over to the bed and sat on the side opposite him to remove her own jacket and hat before crawling across the wide expanse of mattress to him. Missy bit her tongue to keep from giggling and ruining the surprise. She made no real effort to hide herself from him, yet the fact that he couldn't sense her even at this distance spoke measures toward how overwhelmed he was, mentally.

Missy could play doctor, too.

Red nails fluttered over the back of his shirt before alighting on his neck, just at the dip at the base of the skull, delicate as a butterfly. "Contact," was all she gave as warning before connecting to his mind.


	4. Seb and the Sop

David Chang woke up alone, cold, and soppy. That meant he'd been drinking. But why? He never drank anymore. He knew how he was when he was drunk.

Unsteady, head twirling like Missy whenever she had a song stuck in her head, he got to his feet. Missy. Oh god, she had been there. She'd seen him drunk. She was going to fire him. He didn't know what he did, but he must have done something irreparably damaging to both his career and self-esteem. That was just how these things went.

A cup crunched underfoot, and some flat champagne leaked out onto the floor. David stumbled away, caught himself on the chair that still housed Missy's jacket and sank gratefully into it. The lights were too bright, humming. The air was freezing cold.

He tried to recall what had happened. Almost without conscious thought, David pulled Missy's jacket in his arms, enjoying the warmth its heavy felt provided. Her perfume lingered on it, like pressed flowers, afternoon light, dust, and a hint of smoke. David had learned it well over the past year. It brought to mind flashes of Missy in his arms, cool-skinned and handsy as he tried to talk to her about something very... something very important. His head resting on her chest, hearing her heartbeat, counting the quick flutter. If David was lucky, that was just a flash of uncomfortable dreams instead of uncomfortable reality.

She created some conflict in interests in him. It wasn't just Dr Skarosa who created 3W, after all. Missy had been involved since the beginning, helping him contact the dead and rich alike. David would have loved to been there for that process.

But he came in later, after the infrastructure was already in place, the funding already found. They just needed people to man the mausoleums. Missy was the one who accepted David when he failed so many other interviews, never got out or met anyone, resigned himself to letting his doctorates and accomplishments fade away. At first he couldn't figure out what a mausoleum needed with a bioinformatics specialist, but once Missy explained, David was captivated by the idea, by everything 3W represented and meant to do.

Yet she scared him, and he was ashamed to say it was because of her femaleness: pet names, pet touches, feminine but not demure. David wasn't equipt to deal with that. In school and in other offices it was always men he talked to, brilliant men but men nonetheless, who knew how to keep their distance. Girls were rarely present, much less his superiors.

Even with no degrees that he'd ever seen, no academic titles, Missy could grind all those brilliant men under her dainty kitten heels. She was some sort of prodigy, David was sure. And she made him feel as though he were an intrinsic part of the plan. The Nethersphere in particular was of interest to him, given his field. David wanted to take it apart just to see how it worked, but it was central to 3W's existence and off-limits to tampering, at least by him. While Dr Skarosa got all the credit, David knew Missy played a much larger part in its creation than officially documented. He had seen it down a scant few times with layers of skirts and boots sticking out from under it, like a witch that got a house dropped on her, as Missy did maintenance, and it was mostly she who talked about it specifically. David had been happy to listen.

It was a good thing that they had together, David thought, especially since Dr Skarosa passed on earlier last year.

Then he'd gone and bunged it up, and for what, exactly?

David buried his face in her jacket, as though it would block out the world. The world -

He remembered why he'd been drinking.

That couldn't have actually happened, could it have? He saw it online, but that wasn't the same as real life. There was no way London was burning. Alien invasions, sure, those happened, fact of life by now, but there were protocols and procedures in place to deal with them. London had to be safe. He had to check.

David tried the doors to the lift. They didn't open. He mashed the button repeatedly, as though that would fix the problem, then tried to wedge his fingers into the seam before remembering the stairs, the emergency exit.

Locked and locked. Why was everything locked? Where was Missy?

"Hey, guy. Um. David, right?"

David whipped around. The lift was open now, and a man in a tan suit stood in its open door, hand lifted in an awkward wave. He relaxed and gestured for him to come in further. "Seb! Oh, thank god. I thought I was trapped. I - I didn't realize you had come in today."

"Yeah, and lucky I did, huh? It's crazy out there!"

David returned to the chair and sank into it again. Seb sat carefully on another one, as though afraid it would disappear. "So it's true?"

"You bet," Seb said with a grin. Then he leaned forward conspiratorially. "Just out of curiosity, what's true? For some strange reason, I can't seem to access any outside lines." David found it hard to believe he didn't know, but gave him the benefit of the doubt. He didn't really know much about Seb, barely ever saw him most days.

"The prime minister. He killed the president, took over the world. Started killing – killing everyone." An echo of Missy correcting him, not _everyone_ , came to mind. Killing enough to matter, except to her.

"Ah, that sounds about right."

"Why are you so calm?" he asked, getting a feeling of déjà vu. Missy had been like this, serene as a spring day. Maybe it wasn't her being female that scared him. Maybe he should be scared of Seb, too. David couldn't muster the energy to, however, still caught up in the fact that the world was well and properly invaded.

"I've been doing some thinking," Seb said instead of answering. "So, adding in what you told me, check this out: Missy shut down the Nethersphere starting -" he checked his watch. "Oh, twelve hours, 36 minutes ago? What happened twelve hours, 36 minutes ago, David? I hope you don't mind me calling you David. Dr Chang's just so formal."

"N-no. It's fine. The prime minister, all that stuff I said. That happened twelve hours, 36 minutes ago?"

"Thirty-seven, now. But that would be a safe assumption. So Missy shuts down the Nethersphere, just when a giant shipment was coming in courtesy of our prime minister. That doesn't make much sense, now does it?" David shook his head, though he had no clue what Seb was talking about. He had thought Seb was the receptionist or something, but he didn't seem like one right now. He was starting to consider that maybe he'd completely misunderstood what 3W was, what the Nethersphere was. "Unless something's wrong with that shipment. The data, the souls, are corrupt, yeah? Missy was pretty vague, but she knew this was going to happen. So, who is Harold Saxon?"

David felt like a deer on a motorway. He didn't know that. He didn't know anything about the prime minister - destroyer of the world - whatever Harold Saxon was now. Even when he voted, he'd just gone with his instinct.

Seb waved his hand dismissively as David struggled to come up with an answer. "I don't know yet, myself, so I doubt someone like you could. But he's something. Vivian Rook knew, and she died for it, but she didn't know enough. Same as that Winters fellow, blustering as he was. Bleh, I can understand killing _him_. Those little things, those metal balls-"

"The Toclafane," David supplied. "That's what he called them."

"The Toclafane, maybe it's them that's causing the problem. Missy emptied my data banks to play god, so I can't recall what they are, though I feel I should know them." He leaned on the table, curled his hand in his fist, and pressed it to his mouth, every movement indicative of thinking very, very hard.

David, completely lost and feeling like he was the only one out of the loop, turned on the computer and typed in "Toclafane" then hit enter. Everything still loaded. The Internet hadn't gone down yet.

The hits were jumbled, a thousand theories built on sandcastles. He cleared the search and tried "Harold Saxon" instead. Underneath his political website which still promised halcyon days were more cohesive titles. The Valiant's live feed must have come back online at some point, or he made another announcement.

"People are calling Mr Saxon the Lord and Master of the Human Race?" David tried from the first hits. "Madman. Master of all. Not much on the Toclafane."

"Hah, just typing it in. I forgot you could do it like that. Good job, David. Master of all, eh? Master, master, master." Seb tapped the table with each name, like the drumming that got caught in David's head and never went away, though without any noise to accompany it. The lack of sound when there clearly should be sound hurt David's head, and he went to the water cooler. Nothing was making sense, and he couldn't process all that.

"Ah," Seb said finally, so quietly David almost missed it. He kept refilling his cup, washing out the stale taste of champagne and shame.

"Does that mean something? Aside from it being a good name for a megalomaniac?"

"It does," Seb said with a grin that revealed far too many teeth. "Did you know Missy's just a nickname?"

David shook his head no. "It says Missy on her door, on all her signatures. It's a bit weird for a name, but you should see my middle name. I didn't want to pry. But what does that have to do with anything?"

Seb bit his lip as though he were on the verge of spoiling the punchline of the funniest joke, but instead of laughter, he said, "No, nothing. Just something to think about, yeah?"

David pulled off his glasses and rubbed at his face. He wasn't doing any thinking like this. "I need to lay down."


	5. The Odd and Very Toxic Couple

The Master bucked up and caught her with his elbow. Missy toppled over the side of the bed, taking him with her. They writhed in a tangle of skirts and pressed pants, neither quite aware of where they were, physically. The banging on the door reverberated, bounced around, intermingled with the drumming in an echo chamber.

Somehow the Master had gotten turned around and dug his fingers into Missy's hair, undoing her updo. Instead of forcing her out, which even under the drumbeat he had to realize he could easily do, he dove in. Missy's mental walls were in shambles after Rassilon had finished with her, and even as long as it had been since, she hadn't completely recovered. The Master's own defenses on the other hand were still fortified, no cracks, no back doors, even the drums would have served as a deterrent for anyone except Missy.

When the drums thrummed loudest without the background hum of Gallifreyan minds, she would have clawed her way back to Gallifrey for some reprieve and tried exactly that. Now that they were gone, it was so, so quiet. The Doctor never reached out to her, refused to be touched, afraid (she liked to think) that he wouldn't find her even though she was always there. Always.

It made it easier to hide if he wasn't even looking for her, but was so lonesome and hurt, just a tad. No other species could hope to understand the mind of a Time Lord except another Time Lord. She'd tolerate the drums for the contact, and the Master could share them at least temporarily. Both got what they wanted, folded neatly together like origami.

Tributaries of history rushed down, down between them, bleeding into one greater river with a rapid, shared heartbeat - different cells, but one person, one timeline, a Mobius strip twisted up. And yet, she couldn't remember this. There were no locked doors or empty spaces, no infinite feedback loops like mirrors reflecting each other. The memories just didn't exist. This was more than a limitation effect at play.

They were forcibly pulled apart, gasping like they'd been drowning. Respiratory bypass did little if one didn't remember to use it.

As soon as they broke contact, everything came rushing back. Quiet, again, in Missy's mind. The drums all the louder now that they weren't shared, in the Master's. Missy tasted blood in the back of her throat. That might have been a bit of a bad idea. She was still out on whether it had been worth it or not, thoughts swirling and unfocused.

Even if Missy could make up her mind and wanted to reconnect, the hands on her arms, hooked at her elbows, kept her from approaching the Master. He was likewise held, but much more carefully, supported just enough to not fall down. He, after all, wasn't the danger here. The Toclafane spun and chattered, still unable to see Missy and confused about the commotion.

"Let me go," he spat out, yanking himself free to fall to the floor. "Her - her too. Let go."

He caught Missy when she fell forward, and the Master pushed her back against the side of the bed with his body. Hands around her throat, thumbs stroking the sharp lines of her jaw. She felt him prodding at the surface of her mind, could read his response in just that simple touch, but he didn't go deeper. Disbelief mixed with suspicion and anger, and also an embarrassing seed of hope. A future self meant a future. One without the drums. God, she'd been a mess back then. She was a mess, still, if this situation was anything to go by.

The Master was silent, then barked, "Out!" The suits obediently left, but the Toclafane required another shout before they vanished.

"Aw, they're just children. Be nice," Missy cooed. She caught the Master's wrists and pulled his hands away when he began to squeeze just a little too hard, brought them down to rest over her hearts.

"I'm not nice." To prove his point, he tore her blouse, twisted it down around behind her and caught her hands in the cuffs. As though she were going anywhere. Missy's fingers curled with a mixture of anticipation and the slightest flutter of fear. If she recalled correctly (and she was sure she did, the parts at least that didn't involve herself), the Master in this incarnation was violent, unpredictable, and had several minor issues with women. She didn't know how that would apply to a woman who was also himself, which made it just a teensy bit exciting.

His face scrunched in thought as he looked over the body he'd have in the future, mind closed off again. Wary as the half-feral creature his drums pushed him to be, especially now that he didn't have to play pretend, he splayed his hand on her chest, between her hearts. Counting. Missy slumped against the bed as best she could with him straddling her, eyes on the ceiling. Her nose stung. He must have hit it somewhere in their earlier flailing.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

"Just having a bit of fun, love."

"A bit of fun?" he mimicked, even switching to her accent before snapping back to his own. "Are you mad?"

Missy gazed at him with eyes half-lidded, a small frown marring her features when he made no move to continue ravishing her. Without her memories of this encounter to guide her, and the instability in that regeneration that she could no longer relate to, it was almost like he was a different person, someone she knew not from the inside, but the outside. He was still the Master, though. Even if the personalities changed, even through torture and torment and a hundred poor choices, the Master, at his, her, or its core, remained the same.

"You would know."

He did know, even if he didn't know her. Bananas, the both of them. The Master pulled Missy to her feet and ordered her to free herself from her blouse and skirts. She kicked them aside, but kept her underlayers on. Layers had always been very important. Nudity, vulnerability, was always so off-putting.

"You know, I got dressed up so nice for you," she bemoaned as she pulled the bobby pins out of her ruined pile of curls. "And what do I get in return? I get my nose broken. That's gratitude for you."

"That's assault for you," he echoed in the same tone as he folded her clothes and picked up the pins she kept dropping. "Try that again, and I don't care who you are, I'll break you."

Missy waited for him to stand, pins in hand, and blue eyes met amber. She dropped three more, then smiled at the Master. He hit her.

Missy stumbled back, a scowl on her face, fingers pressed to the blooming injury.

Mercurial as ever, the Master caught her and tugged her onto the bed with him before she had quite recovered. He pulled her hand away and touched the reddened skin of her cheek, her lip, as though he didn't know how it got there, then moved on to exploring the rest of her. The vortex manipulator was unclipped and deposited on the bedside table. Missy sighed and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He seemed more intent on verifying she was properly his body instead of another stolen one than doing anything fun. She bruised like a Gallifreyan, and whinged like one, too, until he told her to shut up. Missy blew a raspberry and sprawled back onto the bed, let him get his self-assurances out of the way.

The Master had not taken the news that Gallifrey was gone well at all when the Doctor, tactless as ever, had informed him. He'd known from the silence, but he trusted the Doctor's word so much more than his own mind. That idiot didn't even realize what kind of power he had over the Master. It embarrassed her, seeing him like this: moody, desperate, and out of control, a personality not befitting the Master. She would have to straighten him out.

First order of business: Gallifrey's absense. When Missy got tired of being pawed mentally and physically in decidedly unfun ways, she disavowed him of that notion. She hadn't know about Gallifrey when using the Infinity Gate, so imagined this tidbit would just be another moment lost. No harm, no foul, excluding whoever messed with her memories. There would be a lot of harm when she found them.

"It's not gone."

The Master's hands stilled. "What?"

"Not. Gone. Gallifrey's not gone. Still there. Just can't get to it." She wiggled her fingers in some vague gesture of there/not there/you know how it is.

"Well... that. That just completely throws a wrench in my New Time Lord Empire," the Master said.

Missy shrugged and took his face in her hands, felt the tumbling emotions under a veneer of droll commentary. "It wasn't a very good plan to begin with."

"I'm sure yours is much better."

"It is. Thank you." Missy pulled him down, caught his mouth with a click of teeth and tint of blood. They didn't connect mentally again, but not for lack of trying on Missy's part, and this time the meeting was far more controlled. Mutual, almost, but the Master showed his disdain for Missy's earlier approach in how roughly he was acquainting himself with her body.

He really wasn't very nice at all. But then again, neither was Missy.


	6. Dr Chang's Idle Hands

When he bothered to get back up, Seb had gone. Not even a word to David before he'd popped out to... wherever one went in an apocalypse. Everything was unlocked, though, and David wandered through empty halls lit only by the glow of empty tanks waiting to be filled. A few, like the one in his office, already had a skeleton in it, but most of those who had reserved the other ninety tanks were still alive. Or they used to be. Either way, they likely weren't going to be using them any time soon. He shivered and made a mental note to not try and access the afterlife. Disintegration, razor blades, deaths upon deaths so soon - he didn't want to hear what that sounded like.

"Seb?" he tried, listening to the rushing quiet. David leaned over one of the railings and called, louder, "Missy?" Of the two, he hoped Missy replied.

Neither did. David tried going out to the cathedral proper where Missy liked to linger, but those doors remained barred, which left David awkwardly standing outside of her office. He had never been in there. Interviews, walk-throughs, day-to-day work always took place in the room that had become his own, shared office. But that was the only place she could be. There was no way Missy had gone out into the city after they'd gotten done heralding the end times. She was quirky, not crazy.

David knocked. When that garnered no reply, he tried the button. It slid open silently. "Missy?" he whispered into the dark. The only light was from the watery glow of the tanks and faint orange of the fake sconces outside. He fumbled at the door frame for a light switch, but met only smooth wall.

David called one more time, a little stronger and steadier, before letting himself in to find a light. He shouldn't, really, but with nothing outside, the only direction to go was forward.

The door slid shut, plunging him into darkness.

It took only a second to verify there was not, in fact, a single switch or button to be found nearby, so David had little choice but to grope blindly forward into the room itself.

Of all the things he expected to trip over - chairs, tables, tools, maybe a potted plant - a cat was not one of them. David only knew it was a cat due to its hellish yowl, followed by claws scaling his side. He pitched forward, hit a surface full of nobs and bumps, knocked just the right one to flick on some under-lights, and fell down a short set of stairs, braining himself on a banister that had no right being in someone's office.

David scrambled immediately to his feet to see what he'd damaged outside of his own face. His assessment was quickly derailed when he noticed the room proper. This wasn't an office. In fact, he didn't quite know what it was.

In the middle of the room was a hexagon-shaped console from which the faint light emanated, catching up in a central column of glass and inner workings David couldn't begin to understand the purpose of. He crept forward, mindful of the cat (though it seemed to have vanished) in the gloom. Aside from the column, everything else looked like a round office, bookshelves on the walls, a few tables with decorative baubles on them, a lounge chair with a small side table and lamp. Praying it worked like normal lamps, David reached up for a chain and clicked it on.

Nothing exploded, and now able to see a bit more, he returned to the column, which was far more interesting than a reading nook with _World Domination_ , by Emile Keller, and an empty cup of tea. Nothing that looked like it might be words was in English, or Chinese, or any language he might have at least recognized. Just swirls and circles, like the parts of a clock. He traced a few lines engraved into the metal as though that would unlock their meaning.

David circled the column, unsure where to even start, at least until he came to a monitor on a swivel arm. Nothing about it was any stranger than the rest of the console, but the pictures tucked along its edge were worth investigating, especially as one was himself, working at one of 3W's computers. Another was a man with wild gray hair and severe features. And a third, and a fourth. Sometimes there was a girl with him, but the focus was always the same.

 _A different day with a different man,_ she'd said before uncorking the champagne. David had to assume this was that different man, and felt guilty. It never seemed like Missy had a - boyfriend? husband? person? - a person in her life, and while David knew she'd never really been available for many reasons, fancying someone who had a someone felt like he'd crossed a line.

And also she might be an alien? That would take some processing. This was way beyond anything he'd ever seen, and he felt fairly secure in his knowledge of current technology.

Unwilling to start pressing buttons the purpose of which eluded him, David settled for falling back to the incongruous stairwell and the doorway beyond. While she seemed quite settled in this main room - he'd call it the console room for now - there turned out to be entire halls beyond it to be explored.

The cat joined him again at about the third room, after seeing one that seemed naught but a whitish void and one with clothes neatly arranged, mostly for men and almost entirely black, spanning fashions from every era and realm of fiction. Missy's man didn't seem to ever change his wardrobe, so David had to wonder if this was all Missy's own. Clothes didn't tell him anything except that she had a predilection for cross-dressing and morbid colors, so he'd quickly abandoned it for the next room.

A laboratory. This was more like it. The cat twining between his shins almost sent him toppling into a table, but David was wise to its existence now and nudged it away. Looking very indignant, the cat sat in the middle of the room and proceeded to judge him harshly with golden yellow eyes as he nosed about the tables. A workbench housed tools, some half-gutted project of data disks, crystals, and wires, and a journal that had both English and that circular script (which now certainly was a language) scattered throughout. It was most definitely Missy's handwriting.

The cat broke from its judgement as soon as he settled down to investigate and hoped up to sprawl across the paperwork. David had owned cats ever since he was little, so he'd put up with worse and easily figured out a way to read around the short, black fur and kneading claws. "I haven't forgiven you for tripping me," David informed it as he massaged its chin with his knuckles. His forehead still smarted from that, but the pain had been easy to ignore in all the excitement. Now that he was thinking about it, though, he rubbed at the probable bruise as he puzzled over the documents.

Definitely an alien, David decided. Missy was an alien. He rolled that around in his mind for a bit.

"Missy's an alien." The cat raised its head to blink lazily at him, then resumed its half-stupor. "You're probably an alien, too, aren't you? I guess I'm glad there are cats in space."

Then David realized he was petting an alien cat in an alien ship with his alien boss currently unaccounted for. He had to get out of here.

Standing so suddenly that he startled the cat away, David reshuffled the papers into what he hoped was their original order and retreated to the console room. Still quiet. He regarded the door that led out into the mausoleum, then the console itself. Though he was loathe to throw himself into random button-mashing, that looked to be the only option left. With one last longing look at the door, as though by will alone he could open it, David turned his full attention to the console.

The cat was already there. It never broke eye-contact as it carefully and deliberately placed a paw on a small switch, one exactly like a myriad others on the console. He approached warily, flicked the suggested switch, and heard the door open with a pneumatic hiss.

"Um. Thanks? Thanks, cat."

David didn't question the cat as it bounded after him, made no attempt to trip him over the balcony just beyond (which would have resulted less in a bruise and more in every bone shattered from that fall), and dashed away to wherever its scheming needed it. He turned around to regard the door as it closed behind him. Just a normal door, no way that entire area - and he'd only seen four rooms out of what looked to be infinite doors - fit into the mausoleum, which itself somehow fit into St Paul's Cathedral. There'd always been something up here, everything a little too advanced, but he'd chalked that up to what money could buy. Now David had a very different theory.

"I hope you're not planning on going in there, poppet," Missy said. David yelped and nearly took himself over the bannister scrambling backwards.

"Missy!" was all he could think to say as she caught his arm in her own and pulled him to safer ground. Her fingers tangled in David's. She really was cool-skinned, like a reptile. David shivered.

"Yes, Missy. Have you been keeping yourself entertained?"

"I - You - What happened to you?" David's fumbling for an answer that wasn't 'oh my god, you're an alien' was interrupted by the realization that what he'd initially taken to be shadows cast by the tanks were in fact bruises.

Missy let go and touched her face, as though she didn't realize they existed until just now. "Do you like them?" she asked, as though talking about a pair of earrings. "I don't think I like them. And I could say the same for you though, poppet. What happened to your forehead?" Missy reached up to prod the injury, and her strange body temperature was welcome on the hot swell. David blushed. Just being an alien didn't mean she was a _bad_ alien, right? She certainly wasn't one of those Toclafane things. Maybe her lack of care about the butchered humans wasn't malicious, but just her not understanding.

"I fell." He wanted to ask, just to hear it from her mouth, but refrained.

"Heads are such fragile things. We should get you tended to, dearie," Missy said, completely unaware. "Come, come." She tugged him along back to his office and pulled out a cold compress from the mini-fridge in the back room. Missy set him in a chair and pressed it to his forehead, then set about cleaning up the small mess they'd made while chattering about some book she'd read recently. Likely _World Domination_. He hoped it wasn't a literal title, in hindsight.

David watched Missy bustling about, throwing away cups and disappearing occasionally to get paper towel or a cleaner. Everything in here was normal, the hum of lights and chill of the air conditioning unit. Like the world outside didn't exist. She wasn't bothering with her own injuries, and David didn't feel brave enough to broach the subject again. Someone had hurt her, an idea that settled uneasily in his stomach and answered the question of whether he liked them with an emphatic _no_.

"What's got you so sullen?" Missy asked, hands on her hips.

"Just. Everything." There was no way he could explain. David wasn't any good with words, even if he knew what was safe to talk about and what wasn't.

"You're still on about the invasion?" He let out a sigh, mentally thanking her for supplying an excuse. "Naught to be done about it now. You should move on."

David looked down at his hands and didn't comment.


	7. This Ain't Rock 'n Roll

They both loved to dance - figuratively, literally, a mix of both. They danced in all sorts of ways as the weeks passed.

The Master spun Missy out, then caught her again around her hips, pulling her flush to his body. This wasn't a dance with steps, or choreography, but the Master and Missy were as ever on the same wavelength as heels clicked and hands wandered to David Bowie's "Modern Love."

On the sides, hesitant and subservient, were Martha's family in their silly little serving outfits and dour faces. Lucy stood across the room, distant-eyed though her gaze followed the two as they danced. Missy wondered what she was thinking as another woman danced with her husband. She caught her eye and blew her a kiss. Lucy flinched, stare falling away to a suddenly very interesting middle space.

 _You scare her_ , she felt in her mind. _She's afraid I love you more_.

"Do you?" Missy asked aloud, the ghost of a whisper brushing across the Master's lips. He was still being very stubborn about letting her properly into his mind, so she wasn't going to give him the pleasure of their instinctual formless, wordless dialogues.

"Yes." The answer fell in the lull between songs, and Lucy's attention snapped back to them. Missy didn't even need to read her mind to know her thoughts. What was her Harry saying 'yes' to?

He grinned, and she grinned, and as the Master dipped Missy their teeth clicked in a rough kiss. There was, after all, only one person in the universe the Master loved more than the Doctor.

The Master pulled her back up and looked at one of the speakers now blaring "Life on Mars."

"It's not much of a dancing song, is it?" he asked. "Is all you have David Bowie?"

"I like David Bowie."

The Master reeled her in for a slow dance to the whine of the sad, yearning lyrics. As he pulled Missy in close, he kissed her cheek and she heard under the drumbeats of his mind, _And what of that other David of yours_? Her own thoughts supplied the image, his supplied the fantasy - screaming, dying - and she jerked away from the Master, pale eyes glinting like diamonds.

"Leave him out of this," she hissed, shaking off the Master's touch. He grabbed her again, pulled her close as though there hadn't been even the slightest hiccough in their dance.

"You seem... upset," he said aloud, mind closed off to his actual thoughts.

"He is _mine_."

The fingers around her waist and wrist tightened, and she felt the imprints of her bracelets digging into her skin, felt the remnant ghosts of his mind where he'd been prodding. They were no longer dancing. Missy breathed hard through her nose, lips pursed tight as she forced herself to not lash out. Possessiveness was a trait she'd never been able to rid herself of, and both knew that.

The Master's lips trailed along her jawline, the drawn tendons of her neck. "By virtue of that, he's mine, too, is he not?"

Missy shoved him away, twisting her wrist to break his hold on her, and stormed off. Several Toclafane parted to make passage for the door, bobbing uncertainly in the air. They liked the Mister Master, but got conflicting information about the Missy Master. Behind her, the Master resumed dancing, catching Lucy up into his arms and replacing Missy like she'd never been there at all.

* * *

"Hello, deary."

Lucy's blue eyes drifted up the mirror, tube of lipstick poised just above her lips, and caught the silhouette of Missy reflected from the doorway, bathed in the brighter light of the Valiant's halls. Missy stepped further into the room, closing the door behind them and plunging them back into the cozy gloom of the bedroom.

"Harry's not here."

"I know." Missy settled in on the desk beside Lucy, perching primly at the corner. When it was obvious she wasn't going anywhere, Lucy retracted her lipstick and put the lid on it with a sharp click.

"What do you want?" she asked, frowning up at Missy. She would never have dared be so forward with _Harry_ , Missy thought, lips curled into a moue at the lack of respect. But it did make those eyes sparkle nicely.

Missy set a bottle and two glasses on the table. "I thought we could have a little party. Just us girls."

"Does Harry know about this?" Lucy asked, eyes sliding away from Missy's face and looking around the room as though to find any hidden surveillance equipment. They were there, but Missy had already disabled them before making her move.

Missy leaned forward, close enough to kiss those pale lips that still needed their lipstick. She knew there was a bit of a rebel somewhere in Lucy's pretty head. It took getting blown up to notice, so the Master still didn't suspect a thing, and she was going to use that to her advantage. "Do you want Harry to know about this?"

"No," Lucy said quietly. She wanted her secrets as anyone did, and goodness knew with an unapologetically intrusive telepath for a husband, Lucy didn't have many left.

Smiling - not grinning her usual grin, all teeth and malice, as she didn't want to make Lucy suspicious - Missy closed that infinitesimal gap between them. Unlike how she liked to be treated, she had to be careful with Lucy. Be gentle. The Master certainly wasn't.

Even with a different person beside her and half a bottle of wine inside, Lucy's thoughts were mostly on the Master. Missy listened idly to Lucy talk about how things were before as she traced Gallifreyan letters on Lucy's stomach, felt the tension of muscles beneath the thin material of her dress. She had to go slow, push boundaries only slightly. Like a wounded bird, Lucy had to have time to acclimate to her presence, especially as an ally instead of the competition.

"Were you and Harry lovers before? You seem to know him better than I... than I ever did," Lucy said suddenly. Though the statement was neutral, Missy felt the shiver of jealousy under it. Lucy might have begun to fear the Master, might think she made some very poor calls, but he was still her husband and she had loved him. Having lost him to someone of less conventional beauty and frankly grating personality rubbed the wrong way more so than if he'd been fucking models or secretaries like any normal politician. It settled on her thoughts like a thin sheet of ice, projected loud and clear for Missy to pick up even with just her fingers on her skin, and Missy was pleased that she felt comfortable enough to ask.

"No, no, don't worry, poppet. He never cheated on you - well, before this. Does it count as cheating now? - Either way, he likes you, I like you, and he definitely doesn't like me."

Lucy pulled herself up and reached across Missy for one of the glasses of wine, winding up with the one that had pink lipstick in a shade Lucy would never wear stamped onto its lip. Missy grabbed the bottle and topped her off.

"Why are you still alive, if he doesn't like you? He doesn't... play with you like he does the others, either."

It wasn't trust, and it wasn't entirely the alcohol that made her so forward. A bit of prodding, and Missy decided it was simple resignation. If she was betrayed, she was betrayed; if they were caught, they were caught. If neither happened? Then neither happened.

"We play, just our games are different."

When Missy was there, the Master latched onto her instead of hiding, face buried in her hair and hands tight around her hips, or her throat. The first time he did it, she'd collapsed at the sudden mental intrusion and reevaluated her own, earlier attempt at contact. It really was horrifying when it happened apropos of nothing. Just a sudden cacophony where once there was calm - whirling storms and beating drums siphoning down like a broken dam, dragging her own thoughts away to be replaced by the drowned and damaged ones of the Master.

Once they established how much surprise contact sucked, and the Master felt suitably avenged, their encounters were much more enjoyable. They even talked sometimes, though Missy couldn't explain too much lest he interfere with her own plans. She knew he would, both out of malicious intent and curiosity, so kept those cards close to her chest and the ideas locked away behind shattered glass and burning cities, places the Master would never go in his explorations of her mind. But spoilers were fine, since he wasn't going to remember, and she spoiled everything.

"Very different," she repeated almost to herself, thinking on the games she played with the Doctor. Where often she'd wear disguises, plan plans that spanned years for the Doctor, she was always toe-to-toe with the Master, barely ahead, then barely behind, then ahead once again. Neither was a gracious loser, and both played to win, even if it meant self-sabotage. Missy stroked Lucy's jawline with the back of her fingers, letting the feather touch trail down to her dress's low collar. She wondered if Lucy had come up with her schemes on her own - no, likely not. Poor dear didn't have the mind for scheming.

Lucy made no comment to that, sitting still and simply observing Missy as Missy observed her, lost in her own thoughts. "Are you a Time Lord like my Harry and the Doctor?"

"I prefer Time Lady."

Lucy pulled her lower lip between her teeth, worrying at the skin. Missy made a vague noise of encouragement, and that was enough for her to continue. "Which is... which is normal for your kind? The Doctor, or Harry?" Missy tried to recall if she ever heard Lucy refer to the Master by any other name during this time, but no. She clung to the illusion.

"The hero or the villain? Neither, deary. Time Lords as a general rule don't get involved, and when they do they ruin everything." She paused, reconsidering her statement. "In that regard, at least, the Doctor and the Master are typical Time Lords. But in every other way, they're both atypical. Renegades."

Missy wisely kept herself out of that grouping, if she wanted to win over Lucy. Tender touches and plying wine was only a short-term gain. Besides, omitting some information wasn't nearly the same as lying, and she'd found recently that honesty, rare and lauded trait that it was, was really the best way to manipulate people without mind control.

Lucy relaxed visibly at that, and let Missy continue with her petting. It certainly said something about this situation, that the most trustworthy alien here was Missy. She just didn't know what.


End file.
